You can participate in Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, Saturday, May 6, by organizing an event to clear dried leaves and other flammable debris from your neighborhood.
Helpful tools and tips are available from the National Fire Protection Association to develop a 2017 Wildfire Community Preparedness Day activity for your community, or organization.
Before starting a project, it is important to review the safety tips and safety gear, which includes properly stacking firewood and wearing safety goggles.
The Preparedness Day customizable flyer provides an opportunity to add local event information. Download the flyer, fill in your project details and start distributing today!
Use this news release template to announce your community’s participation in Wildfire Community Preparedness Day.
The Wildfire Community Preparedness Day logo may be used to promote local campaign efforts. Download the logo.
This spring, learn how to prepare and react should a tornado watch or warning be issued for your area.
This April, there have been tornadoes in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin.
Do you know if your neighborhood is at risk for tornadoes? The tips to stay safe in a tornado are simple and easy to practice.
Whether you find yourself in a building, in a vehicle or outside during a storm, Ready.gov provides the following specific actions to stay safe.
In apartments, houses, small buildings or high-rises:
Go to a pre-designated area or safe room designed and built to Federal Emergency Management Agency P-361 criteria or tornado storm shelter built to ICC 500 criteria.
If a safe room is not available or you are unable to move there safely, take shelter in a basement, storm cellar, or to the center of a small interior room on the lowest level (closet, interior hallway) away from corners, windows, doors, and outside walls.
In a high-rise building, go to a small interior room or hallway on the lowest floor possible.
In a mobile home or office:
Leave immediately and go to a pre-identified location such as the lowest floor of a sturdy, nearby building or a storm shelter. Mobile homes, even if tied down, offer little protection from tornadoes.
Outside with no shelter
Immediately get into a vehicle, buckle your seat belt, and try to drive to the closest sturdy shelter. Never try to outrun a tornado in urban or congested areas.
Take cover in a stationary vehicle. Put the seat belt on and cover your head with your arms and a blanket, coat or another cushion if possible.
Lie in an area noticeably lower than the level of the roadway and cover your head.
Volunteering in your community is a rewarding experience for both yourself and those you are assisting.
April 23-29, is National Volunteer Week. You can find volunteer opportunities or start your own project. Serve.gov offers resources to help you organize a group and be a positive addition to a community-based organization, or, if such an organization does not exist, to be a well-organized independently-run group that fills a gap in the community.
We are pleased to feature this courtesy of the organization Stand With me as they continue their efforts to fight hate, strengthen hate crimes and work on overcome discrimination in all areas with action items for us all. It provides an indication of grass roots organizations striving to make a difference on a constant and consistent basis.
How can religious groups or immigrant populations (and their allies) be effective advocates especially when they are small in number? That's a question we answered at our webinar this past week on how to advocate for stronger hate crimes and anti-discrimination protections with your elected representative.You can view the entire webinarhere. Thank you toPoligon Education Fundfor lending their expertise and to all of you who attended and donated to Stand With Me. We hope to continue bringing you similar webinars in the future.
Your ACTION ITEMS for the week:
Stand With Me will be at MIT in Cambridge, MA on May 1, we would love to see you if you are in town!
Join the LGBT community in protesting hate crimes and hate incidents in New York (4/28).
Take action and learn about actual things you can do this month to fight religious discrimination at this active-learning panel (Brooklyn 4/27).
Each week, streaming sites like Netflix, HBO, and Amazon release a whole spate of new movies for us to gobble up.
Global Citizen has scoured the endless landscape of TV, movies, and streaming services to find the best things for you to watch. Check back every week as we present the latest and best offerings for you to enjoy.
1. “The Age of Consequences,” Documentary, Apple iTunes
Available on iTunes for just $0.99, this documentary considers the national and global security implications of a warming planet. Water and food shortages, extreme weather patterns, and rising sea-levels, this documentary argues, will lead to increasing instability, and more crises like the one in Syria.
The highest-grossing film of all time, “Avatar” portrays an indigenous culture’s struggle to survive an invasion from earth-based explorers. The Na'vi are an advanced race that live in harmony with nature and whose way of life is under grave threat from exploitative forces.
“Avatar,” director James Cameron said of the film, “wasn’t so much of a message as it was a feeling — a feeling that you needed to connect better with nature.”
More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans each year, posing a grave threat to this complex underwater ecosystem. This Netflix documentary shows how, eventually, this plastic waste ends up in an unsettling place: our stomachs.
Produced in collaboration with Patagonia, “Jumbo Wild” takes us to the backcountry of British Columbia where a coalition of First Nations people, environmentalists, and locals have fought back against a proposed all-seasons resort development that would threaten sacred lands and threatened grizzly bear populations for more than 20 years.
The argument made by “Love Thy Nature” is quite simple: if humans were to deepen their relationship with nature, they’d be more inclined to help protect it. Narrated by actor Liam Neeson, this documentary urges you to embark on this critical journey to save the planet.
As this Open Hunger Strike has begun, this was published as we hope Israel will stop Administrative Detentions and at least make sure the Children are released:
#StopAD (administrative detention campaign), #NotATarget (Human Rights Defenders campaign).
As we went to press throughout the network, our team was amazed by the interesting week at hand as ordinary faces throughout the country took to the streets as this week is Tax WeekEnd as all demanded Donald Trump to release his tax returns. Mr. Trump asked that such marches be looked into-this is as there is some interesting dynamics going on which may well put the House of Representatives in play in 2018. Whether the Georgia Election is a harbinger of that is still an open question right now as a new week begins.
+The Guardian of London is documenting the stories and this is their latest newsletter.....
The Resistance Now: marchers across US to demand Trump's tax returns
Tens of thousands of people expected to take part in marches Saturday; Democrats attempt to flip a House seat; Sanders launches his own talk show
It may be the biggest national demonstration since the women’s marches in January.
Tens of thousands of people from across the country are expected to take part in a mass marchon Saturday, to demand that Donald Trump release his tax returns – and raise awareness about economic justice.
Now, more than 130 demonstrations are planned on Saturday, including events in New Zealand in Tokyo. The largest will be in Washington DC, where 50,000 people have expressed interest in attending.
No return policy. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Can Dems flip a house seat to blue?
• Democrat Jon Ossoff is polling well ahead of a special election in Georgia’s sixth congressional district on Tuesday. The 30-year-old has raised $8.3m – much of it donations from out of state – as he tries to win the seat vacated by Tom Price, who left to become Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services.
Ossoff is no Sanders-esque progressive – there’s no mention of single-payer healthcare on his website, or of free university education – but a victory could be encouraging for liberals ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Jon Ossoff talking to a man. Photograph: Erik S. Lesser/EPA
Bernie Sanders: the activist’s Oprah
Bernie Sanders has launched a new Facebook Live show – specifically, The Bernie Sanders Show – which is already attracting millions of viewers.
Early episodes have seen Sanders interview Bill Nye and documentary film-maker Josh Fox, and the Vermont senator plans to take the show on the road in the future.
Sanders staffer Josh Miller-Lewis told the Guardian that Sanders gets ideas for his interviews from reading supporters’ comments on his Facebook page.
He’s listening. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Trump’s Tower targeted over travel ban
25 people were arrested at Trump Toweron Thursday after infiltrating the lobby in a protest against Trump’s immigration policies.
The protesters, from Rise and Resist NYC, sat in front of the building’s elevators holding signs saying “no wall” and “no ban” – in reference to Trump’s now twice-thwarted travel ban.
• The Democratic party is undermining its progressive candidates, writes Jamie Peck. Berniecrat James Thompson came close to winning a traditionally Republican congressional seat in Kansas on Tuesday – but did so without support from the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
•There is hope for liberal Democrats, however. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Sanders’ influence is growing within the party. Sanders is touring swing states with DNC chair Tom Perez next week and one expert believes “the center of gravity has definitely moved to the left since the election”.
Look at that!
This week saw the “first protest in space”, and it was directed at Donald Trump.
ASAN, which promotes independent, open source space exploration, sent a weather balloon – carrying a tweet directed at Trump – to 90,000ft above earth.
The tweet echoes a comment made by astronaut and sixth man on the moon Edgar Mitchell:
“From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”
An inflatable ‘Trump Chicken’ in Washington DC on Friday ahead of the Tax March. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
